I took a stroll after dinner to the Plaza Nina, the favourite lounge of Cadiz in the cool of the evening. The square was crowded with people of all classes; and the beauty of the women throughout Spain, and especially Seville and Cadiz, is very striking, although the picturesque costume with which one is apt to associate the Spanish lady is fast dying out. Black seemed to be the favourite colour, as it always has been in Spain, but the graceful mantilla is gradually but surely giving way to the Parisian bonnet.
The streets of Cadiz are well paved, and the houses substantially built of white stone. I was much struck at first by the heavy iron bars with which the windows of the ground floors in this, as in all other Spanish towns, are guarded. These, I subsequently ascertained, are for the double purpose of excluding thieves and too ardent lovers(!), for it may not be generally known that when a youth in Spain is paying his addresses to a girl, the doors of her parents' house are closed to him; nor is this all, for all intercourse with his novia, or intended, is forbidden excepting through these gratings!
A visit to Cadiz cathedral, "La Vieja," is well repaid, and I was lucky enough to hear a mass sung there. The interior of the building is very beautiful, although a high altar erected by Queen Isabella in 1866 greatly mars the effect, being in very florid style and bad taste. There were no seats at all in the building, the congregation kneeling and sitting upon the bare flags.
The market at Cadiz is a novel and picturesque sight, its stalls laden with every imaginable kind of fruit—grapes, pears, peaches, apricots, and even bananas—in abundance and at absurdly cheap prices.
I was much struck, throughout Spain, with the appearance of the Spanish soldiery. They all, with but few exceptions, looked smart and well set up, and their uniforms looked clean, and fitted them—an uncommon sight on the Continent.
My bill on leaving for Seville surprised me not a little—a good bed-room, excellent dinner and breakfast, including wine and omnibus to the station—about 8s. 6d. in English money! Would that some hotel-keepers I could mention would act on the same principle!
Railway travelling in Spain is cheap, though very slow, and the carriages exceedingly comfortable.
The intending voyager to Spain would, however, do well to learn the etiquettes of the country before going there, for they are manifold, and their non-observance may sometimes be taken as an insult by the sensitive Spaniard. The latter have an almost ridiculously keen sense of personal dignity, even to the very beggars, who consider themselves caballeros (gentlemen), and expect to be treated as such, as indeed they are by their own countrymen. It is also a good rule in Spain, to bear in mind when much pressed for time, that Spaniards hate being hurried, and that the slightest attempt to do so will probably delay you all the longer.
The five hours' journey from Cadiz to Seville is through vast sandy plains, not unlike parts of Roumania, excepting in the neighbourhood of Jeres de la Frontera. Here are large vineyards, in the midst of which stand pretty red-roofed villas, the properties of the owners of the vines, which formed pleasant relief to the eye after the glaring dusty plains left behind us, but to which we return on clearing the outskirts of Jerez.[14] Seville is reached at about eight p.m., and we drive to the Fonda de Cuatro Naciones, in the Plaza Nueva, having been recommended thither by a communicative fellow-passenger.
I stayed two days in Seville, and could willingly have remained longer, had I not been pressed, for it is a truly delightful city. Its houses are built very much in the modern French style, but there are also many old Moorish dwellings, with their open courtyards and fountains. One well worth seeing is the Casa de Pilatos, an exact model of Pilate's house at Jerusalem, and built by Enriquez de Ribiera to commemorate his visit there in 1533. Of public gardens Seville has many, the prettiest of these being Las Delicias, a walk stretching for nearly a mile along the banks of the river Gudalquivir, and planted with orange-trees, pomegranates, palms, roses, and all kinds of rare plants. This is the Champs Elysées of Seville, and when lit up at night, with innumerable coloured lamps, bears no slight resemblance to them. Triana, a transpontine suburb, is worth a visit in the daytime, as it is the residence of gipsies, smugglers, lower order of bull-fighters, and thieves. In December, 1876, it was nearly destroyed by the floods, and Seville was under water for five days, the water reaching to the cathedral doors.